August 9-15, 2013: This week in Memphis history

Saturday, August 10, 2013, Vol. 6, No. 33

2010: Memphis Mayor A C Wharton Jr. announced Tobey Park would be the site for the city’s first neighborhood skatepark. The $440,000 project was completed and opened in November 2011.

2008: Grays Creek residents and others in Cordova began organizing opposition to plans for a new Walmart Supercenter on the northwest corner of Houston Levee and Macon Roads. The project would later be voted down by the Shelby County Commission.

1993: Filming was underway in Memphis on “The Client,” one of three movie adaptations of John Grisham novels filmed in Memphis. Among the actors in the city were Susan Sarandon and Tommy Lee Jones.

1963: Among the new merchant licenses on the front page of The Daily News, a license for Davy Crockett Golf Course at 4380 Rangeline Road in Frayser. The course included at one time a batting range and other non-golf attractions in addition to the city golf course.

1952: The first Holiday Inn opened at 4941 Summer Ave., an idea by businessman Kemmons Wilson, whose business ventures before the motel chain had included movie concessions and jukeboxes and then building homes. Wilson already owned the property and had a lumberyard toward the back of the parcel. The first Holiday Inn had 120 rooms. Wilson borrowed $325,000 to build it and brought it in for $280,000. He applied the balance left to start construction on three more in Memphis.Source: “The Fifties” by David Halberstam